November 5, 2010

Did I Need Something Else to Stress About?

After the work we put into the clean-out this past weekend I felt a keen disappointment that we were stalled by the registration fees. Actually being in the trailer and sorting through the detritus of another family's vacation past (plastic Presidential place mats, holiday decorations, an orange moo moo) my enthusiasm for getting the project done and setting out on some adventures of our own had only been heightened. On Wednesday night I must have had a powerful dream because I woke up on Thursday morning with one thought in my head, "My Ireland Money." In 2008 I was given a clay money jar, called a Terramundi, as a college graduation present. It came with a little card on which you were to write what you planned to save for and on that little card I had penned, "My trip to Ireland." The jar had some coins in it but mostly held paper money. A cash graduation gift from my sister had been the first offering and I had been sticking the odd bill in whenever I had money left over at the end of my month. As my friend Jim just recently quipped, the state of mind between optimism and pessimism is realism, so all day at work I weighed the possibility of actually getting to Ireland, in an economy that has rendered my husband unemployed, against the reality of using that money to register the trailer and start the refurbishment. I was once a Pollyanna but circumstances have made me a realist. I said nothing of my decision to Paul because he would have tried to talk me out of it, but instead, on Friday morning, I woke up, put on my bathrobe, took the jar off the shelf in our den, wrapped it in a dish towel, went out my front door and drop that thing on the concrete walkway without a second thought. I counted the contents on my kitchen table, $800 in cash, $25.40 in coins. Wow...$825.40...I was impressed. As I was sorting out the coins I found that the jar also contained two small silver coins that must have been inserted by the manufacturer of the jar. On one side of the coin was a web address, which I noted , and on the other side was the saying , "Celebrate Your Journey Today!" Hmmm...I felt as if my decision had been instantly validated by the universe. I took $500 out and tucked it into my wallet, got showered, dressed and headed back to the Auto Club as soon as it opened.
At the Auto Club I was assisted by a different agent, a young African-American woman. We chatted a bit about the trailer and my adventures at the DMV. She said, "Let me see what I can do," as her fingers flew across the keyboard. "How does $412 sound." Sounded great to me. $49 less for Ahhhnold to waste! I went back to the house where I found Paul at the kitchen table having a cup of tea. I dangled the registration tags in front of him. "What's this?" he asked. After a brief explanation he seemed upset that I had literally smashed my dream of going to Ireland, but when I said, "Let's go get her on Saturday," he was all in. Later on Friday night I logged on to the website to order myself a new Terramundi jar. I had put the surplus money in a martini shaker, with one of the Terramundi coins, and as I read about the Terramundi jars online I realized that each jar is only supposed to contain one good luck coin. I had put one in the martini shaker and had the other in my purse, intending to put it in one of the drawers of the trailer as a keepsake. I'm a so-so believer in signs from the universe...but having two good luck coins in my money jar must mean something, right?

October 30, 2010

Work Day 1 - Reality Sets In!



October 31st 2010

With the closing of escrow looming on the horizon, the deadline to move the trailer is getting close. We headed out to the desert to prepare the trailer for towing. Our friend who gave us the trailer assured us that it was mostly empty of old belongings which, as it turned out was far from the truth, in fact we managed to fill TEN full size trash bags and a truck bed full of various junk. The desert critters had done a number (one and two) inside most of the cabinets and just clearing items from them turned out to be a challenge for Patti's constitution! I had removed the wheels from the trailer the week before as both tires and the spare were flat and different sizes. I bought a used set of tires and mounted them just for the purpose of moving the trailer to and from storage. We put the wheels on and took it off most of its blocks. We discovered that the mechanism that cranks the Tongue Jack up and down was not working. We removed that and will see if it can be fixed or replaced. Calling it a day, we watched the sun go down over Joshua Tree National Monument and got a Starbucks for the long ride home.





October 29, 2010

DMV Woes...

Prior to the big move we had to attend to the paperwork. Paul called our insurance company to make sure we were covered for the trip and was quite happily surprised to hear that insuring the trailer would cost merely $21 per year! We added the trailer to our State Farm policy. The DMV was another matter.

I went to our local Auto Club office bright and early Friday morning. When I was called to the service desk I was full of new RV owner excitement and anticipation. I had that smug feeling one does when you are stepping up and getting your vehicular ducks in a row. Alas, I am down at the first hurdle. During our chatty exchange about the fun I was going to have getting my lovely little wine trailer gussied up and road-ready a dark look suddenly passed over the face of the Auto Club agent. She looked up at me with a sympathetic smile and advised me that the DMV wanted $461 to bring the registration up to date. Of that amount only $205 was actually registration fees and the rest was just good old State of California rip-you-off penalties. The nice Auto Club lady suggested that I go the DMV and ask for a supervisor. She said I should explain the situation and ask for the penalties to be waived. I thanked her and hit the road to the nearest DMV.

Oh, the sweet lady at the Auto Club had made it all sound so possible. What a dehumanizing process. I waited in line for about an hour (so far, so good) and was eventually called to the desk of a nice older gentleman whereupon I explained the circumstances surrounding our procurement of the trailer and asked what could be done. Before I was even finished speaking his head began moving from side to side in a preemptively negative way. I then asked for a supervisor. He got up to go to a desk in the middle of the DMV bullpen. I waited for him, he waited for her. I saw him speak a few words to her finally and she said no and turned to another DMV employee and began talking. He walked back over to me and told me “She said 'No'.” I then asked to speak to her personally and he kind of sagged a bit in his chair, got up and went back to her desk and waited again to be acknowledged. When he returned he told me to go to a different window and wait and when she was available she would come tell me the same thing herself. I went and waited at the new window. In the beginning I was alone, but others joined me one by one as I waited patiently, silently putting together my best argument, maintaining a look of pleasant anticipation on my face as I was inwardly seething. She took her time. She spoke to several people before getting up and walking in my direction. She did not look amused. In fact she looked like she had just gotten a whiff of something quite unpleasant. At this point in my post I would like to offer a visual so that you, the reader, will enjoy the full experience of having been through this with me. This woman was slight, but not with the kind of compactness of a person who has a great physical fitness regimen or the diet of a truly health conscious individual, nay, she had the physical form of a perennial smoker, the weight maintenance achieved when one suppresses one’s appetite by lighting up every half hour. She had grayish tan skin the texture of weathered saddle leather. Her hair was dyed an unnatural shade of blond and she had acrylic nails, slightly yellowed at the edges on her right hand. With a bored affect, she endured my “best argument” for waiving the penalties and as I concluded with an offer to pay the $205 to update the registration she smoothed down her sweater and began her reply in a most monotone, disengaged manner, "Maybe a few years ago I would have waived the penalties, but now California is in a financial tight-squeeze, so the answer is no." I continued my argument, further explaining that the friend who had given me the trailer had not known about the registration being in arrears as she had been concentrating on taking care of her dying mother and working and raising her own daughter and we were interested in helping her get this trailer off of her property so that she did not have to deal with the process herself. Ms. DMV then told me that those circumstances did not happen to me so that there was no valid reason why she should make an exception for me. I then told the DMV demon, who I am certain now had exited the birth canal with a lit cigarette in her mouth, that if we could not come to some compromise the trailer was going to end up in the dump...or...I could pay the State of California, which is in such a pickle, the $205 to update the registration AND all annual registration fees each year from here on out. I asked her, “Which would be better for California? Zero or $205? A rotting hulk in a landfill, or a restored vintage trailer annually registered?” And she said, I kid you not, "I have to be able to sleep at night...I have to treat everyone fairly...If I give you a break then I have to give him and him and her a break" as she pointed to those behind me in the line. Then she raised her voice, "If you cannot afford to pay the fees, maybe you shouldn't have taken on the responsibility of ownership. Do you expect me to make exceptions for everyone in your situation." Well, wasn't that embarrassing? Barely able to contain my frustration, I replied, “No...you should evaluate each case on its individual merits,” but by then I was convinced that she was some kind of automaton, because she twitched a few times then started to repeat herself.

So...we got the hitch, we got the tires and now it will be a while before I have $461. ‎I hope the new owner of Carol's desert property will work with me on storing it there for a few months. You can all safely use the 10 Freeway tomorrow. HA, HA, HA...you've got to laugh or you go a little crazy. With this, on top of the $280 it cost us last week to get our son’s car out of impound after it was predatorily towed from the Pomona Court House parking lot (for not displaying the tags that had not come in the mail yet,) I am keeping California in the black! I hope they thank me! But I won't hold my breath.




Left to right: Terry Owners Manual and Warranty Certificate

We have all the documents shown in this blog available in Adobe Acrobat files. If you would like a copy of these files please contact us and I will be glad to email them to you.
afinevintageterry68@yahoo.com

October 28, 2010

The Resurrection of a 1968 18' Terry Travel-Pak Trailer.


Original 1968 Terry Brochure


This blog is an ongoing record of the acquisition and restoration of a vintage 1968 Terry  trailer.

My wife (Patti) and I (Paul) have been in the market for a new trailer and had been searching for some time for the right one. Then, about three years ago, Patti read an article in Trailer Life magazine telling the story of a group of female friends who had restored several small vintage trailers and got together several times a year to share their interest in fly fishing - appropriately calling themselves "Sisters on the Fly" - with the monicker applied in one fashion or another to their trailers. Each trailer was uniquely decorated in a Wild West motif, the exteriors emblazoned with colorful Western mural art. Reading the article was an "A-HA" moment for my wife. She no longer wanted the 42 foot 5th wheel trailer with all the bells and whistles. She wanted a mobile art piece that would be small, cozy enough for only two and expressive of her interests and personality. My wife is no fisherman but does have a serious interest in wine. We visit the wineries in Temecula, 45 minutes from our home, go for weekends to the wine growing region of Santa Ynez and have vacationed in the Sonoma wine country for several summers in a row with friends who own a luxury RV.

After reading the article about the fly fishing friends my wife and I began to bid on vintage trailers on eBay. When our friend Carol offered us an abandoned 1968 Terry Trailer, which had been sitting idle on her property near Joshua Tree National Monument, we jumped at the chance. We drove out to look at it and despite the mouse droppings Patti could only see its potential and was immediately inspired to restore, decorate and embellish our newly adopted Terry with one of her favorite pastimes in mind.

Over time the extreme desert climate had begun to take its toll on the vehicle and it had become home to a number of desert critters. Cobbled, as it was, up on blocks, it seemed to be calling out to us to come save it! Patti crawled around under it and took a bunch of pictures to show to a trailer savvy friend and in his opinion the upside of that heat and dry air is that there seems to be no issues with rust or corrosion. That was a green light to commit to the project.

This blog is intended as a record of our attempts to bring this trailer back to life and to share any information we gather along the way, which hopefully, some of you will also find useful. It will not be a restoration back to original condition as, quite honestly, this trailer wasn't all that pleasing to look at externally, being overall white with a wide wood grained stripe running down the middle of the trailer. We will try to keep most of the original fixtures and restore them where possible to keep the trailer feeling "vintage" but it will be reincarnated with a wine country theme using suitable fabrics, flooring and murals and will be christened..."A Fine Vintage"

So, we invite you to follow along with us and share our experiences, offer help or just be amused at our efforts as we venture off into unknown territory!




Powered by WebRing®.